What caused the subsidence of the formidable fear of anything that sounds like eugenics? Is it the discovery that genes "express themselves differently depending on the environment"? There's the report of a study with "the astonishing result":

In boys not exposed to the risk factors, genetics played no role in any of their violent behavior. The positive environment had prevented the genetic switches — to use Mr. Pinker’s word — that affect aggression from being turned on. In boys with eight or more risk factors, however, genes explained 80 percent of their violence. Their switches had been flipped.

If genes seal an individual's fate, we don't even want to hear about it. But if genes merely create risks, and society can "flip the switch" off, then the research supports all sorts of policies and spending programs to avert the risk. With this new twist, there is support for the research.

By the way, I'm never astonished by research that yields the result that research ought to continue in a direction that government will fund because it tends to show that more government is needed.

IN THE COMMENTS: kimsch said:

Do they really want to go there? This research could also imply that sexual orientation could be genetic but turned "on or off" depending on "risk factors"...

AA: "By the way, I'm never astonished by research that yields the result that research ought to continue in a direction that government will fund because it tends to show that more government is needed."

Which is why the UW is so big a ESC research. Well, that an wanting to end life. Slippery slope and all...

I have also seen an example from my home town where a boy was a born con artist. He was from a wonderful family, and a quite well-to-do one, and in a Norwegian small town of that era, there is no need to speak of "environmental factors;" there wasn't any.Yet it seemed this boy could not control himself, he would automatically trick and cheat everyone he came into contact with, most often with no personal gain in sight, but just for the joy of tricking and cheating. He eventually grew up and left town, and the last I heard about him was that he was in jail for having conned the Wedgwood firm into making a zillion dollar, or rather pound, gold decorated dinnerware set for the Danish royal house. Again, without seeming to have any scheme for actually collecting any money from the caper.

"I'm never astonished by research that yields the result that research ought to continue in a direction that government will fund because it tends to show that more government is needed."

Almost $1 billion in federal research grants are awarded to the University of Wisconsin EVERY YEAR.

That's year-in and year-out, regardless of what the economic situation is. None of this funding is EVER put on hold while the United States overcomes a budget deficit or fights 4 wars. It's never OPTIONAL.

It just gets spent every year no matter what the rest of the economic situation is.

They never, ever put off that spending for some other cause that is more important such as natural disasters or wars or massive foreclosures or 17% underemployment or $1.7 trillion in budget deficit or The Great Recession.

Gentlemen, start your in-genes. So does this research shows that the result of a Christian world view surroundings stressing forgiveness and mercy as values flips genes differently from the way that a Muslim world view surroundings stressing revenge killing and the duty to murder infidels flips those same genes. The Saudi funded Madrassas being spread everywhere to radicalize muslims spends billions a year because that is true.

"You mean the kind of policies and spending programs that create and encourage the exact kinds of risk factors (*cough* fatherless homes *cough*) that make the problem worse?"

Yes. Precisely.

But not just "fatherless homes."

After all, we wouldn't have fatherless homes without the liberal dream of endless supplies of welfare, SCHIP, pre-school which is really just free day care, free school breakfasts, after school programs otherwise known as extended day care.

All of these combine to ENABLE women to be able to not need fathers for their children.

Men are no longer needed.

If these were time-limited programs (for example if you were only able to use them for a 24-month period but then had to stop using them for 12 months), then our society wouldn't see 67% of black children with no father. You wouldn't see 53% of American Indian children not having a male presence in their homes or 40% of Hispanics.

Liberals HATE men. It's the only explanation for why they would destroy this many families to advance their agenda.

inherited traits that are linked to aggression and antisocial behaviors, which may in turn lead to violent crime.

Inherited traits that express themselves in aggression and what we consider now to be anti social behaviour (not talking about twisted serial killers like Dahlmer) were actually survivial traits in an uncivilized world.

Men (and women) who were able to quickly channel aggression, go to war, kill other people, plunder and conquer were those who survived. Those whose aggression and anti social tendencies got out of control or beyond the norm, were killed by the others in their tribe/group as dangerous to the rest.

Just because we don't approve of or need some of these tendencies doesn't mean that they were not useful......or may not be useful again. We may need these genes in the future.

Genetically, just like chimpanzees, we are born to be aggressive in various levels. A completely passive species.... will..... die.

Matilda's Anthropology Blog had extensive excerpts from a Nature editorial on the subject. ". . . what if scientific data ultimately demonstrate that genetically based biological variation exists at non-trivial levels not only among individuals but also among groups? In our view, the scientific community and society at large are ill-prepared for such a possibility. We need a moral response to this question that is robust irrespective of what research uncovers about human diversity."

For Chrissake, anyone who has ever raised a child knows they come out of the womb hardwired for ~70-80% of their pesonality. Parents, friends, our culture can tweek the remaining 20-30%. How can this be a fucking revelation.

What's the surprise? I learned in high school biology way back when that genetics and environment both had an influence. But that complicated idea was pushed aside.

Would the same problem apply to literacy tests for voting? After all, the problem in the old South was not the test so much as the fact that the tests were being administered in an arbitrary and capricious manner. (And the schools were designed to be unequal).

I think this is hopeful despite the danger of infinite government spending. (What outcome doesn't potentially call for government spending at this point?) Perhaps soon they'll just be able to turn it off manually/chemically w/o all the tampering with risk factors.

But that's not the real positive which would be the change in the genetic fatalism mindset which can be as pernicious as fundamentalism; this opens a very small window to the light. Perhaps they'll even discover that an individual can actually influence his own outcome beyond genetics/environment.

"In any case, your comment seems to make that claim that marriage = mistake."

Marriage is a mistake - if you are male. If you're a female, it's the best fucking thing since sliced bread.

Why would any man choose to do something that has a 50% chance of him ending up as a legal slave to another person? It's just the dumbest fucking thing a man could ever do. The odds are tremendously against him.

I believe that every man should have to sign a notarized statement before he gets married that informs him that, in the event his wife decides it's just not working out, he will have to give her up to 70% of his income for up to the rest of his life.

The man doesn't have to do anything wrong. She can just decide she met someone better. And it's indentured servitude for the rest of your life.

Why would any man take such a shitty deal except for an uncontrollable genetic predisposition.

It'll start once the appetite for funding global warming dries up. You'll see breathless Newsweek covers showing it snowing in Colorado in June and how the focus on global warming was all wrong and how we need to begin funding global cooling research if we're to prevent the coming Ice Age.

After all, millions and millions and millions of people would be displaced by the advancing glaciers!

The problem is that within the same family the environment can change from child to child as evidenced by the vastly different routes that some siblings take from murderer to writing for the NYT as one example, or how many of us have the lone alcoholic sibling who never gets it together( I do). Or is it a genetic factor? I often wonder. Perhaps there are some obvious environmental factors that trigger predispositions such as a family history of violence but as the article notes," a predisposition is not destiny."

. Perhaps there are some obvious environmental factors that trigger predispositions such as a family history of violence but as the article notes," a predisposition is not destiny."

Birth order comes to mind as does the sex of those in that order. I know that I'm guilty of treating my oldest girl (7) a bit more like an oldest boy, but then, my actual oldest boy (20) didn't HIT THE FREAKING BALL 10 TIMES IN A ROW THE FIRST TIME IN A BATTING CAGE.

"The problem is that within the same family the environment can change from child to child as evidenced by the vastly different routes that some siblings take from murderer to writing for the NYT as one example."

Yes, the real horror every parent must face is that your child could one day write for the NY Times instead of reaching his full potential of becoming Jeffrey Dahmer.

I believe that research already overwhelmingly shows that the best environment to raise children is in a stable two-parent family, and that children from such families are less violent, etc. I think it is safe to assume that being raised in a stable two parent family turns off those genes. So instead of before the government funds further research on what turns on those genes it should encourage people to do what is already known to turn off those genes which to not have children unless the children will at least start off being raised n a stable two parent family. Of course divorce happens and preganancy happens, but the schools should at least teach the advantages of children being raised in stable two parent families, but they don't. The number of stable two parent families is declining in part, I think, because schools don't do enough to teach kids the advantages of stable two parent families. I think schools need to teach it to counteract the effect of popular culture which overwhelmingly dismisses the importance of stable two parent families.

DBQ: Do you believe that any person should be indentured to another for any reason?

You missed my point.

Alimony only lasts as long as there is a payee to receive the alimony.

Of course I don't believe in alimony. When I got my divorce I made damned sure my soon to be ex husband signed documents giving up interest in my retirement and forgoeing alimony, which I might have had to pay being the one who made the income.

I kept the house, the mortgage, the bills and the child. I also forgo any child support because I never wanted to have contact or legal ties to the bastard again.

Alimony and child support, while sometimes necessary, have gotten out of hand and become extortion.

Well, I honestly believe that if it were not for a genetic impulse over which men have no control, they would never accept a deal where if their wife meets a better dude, then the husband just becomes the wife's indentured servant for the rest of her life.

Females have figured out how to take unethical advantage of the nature of genetics in order enable the enslavery of males to their ends.

There is nothing compelling or modern about theories of crime and violence that weave social and biological themes together.

The "experts" were doing that back in the 1800s with their "scientific" theories of how blacks were incapable of civil behavior in white society. The "experts" were doing that back in the 1920-30s with their "scientific" theories of how Jews were by their very biological nature scheming thieves.

But don't think that these "experts" can excuse their twisted and perverted ideas on their own genetic destiny. Such evil by them is freely chosen.

Scott yes the first child tends to have more demands placed on him or her and by the time the second one arrives most parents have mellowed and learned a few things-- that and gender make a difference. My thought, as once divorced, single for a long time and remarried now for almost 15 years, is that one is responsible for your children for life period and that does not make one a slave but part of the cycle of life.

More bollocks from lefty university profs and the NYT. Nobody claims that genetics do not play some role in predicting antisocial behavior.

However, it is, of course, not politically correct to acknowledge the large body of evidence arguing that single parenthood is the major factor in predicting crime and delinquency -- and who knows what else.

We can't be putting major emphasis on the importance of traditional families now can we?

To the point where men are choosing to burn themselves to death on the courthouse steps rather than to continue indefinitely in involuntary slavery to another human being.

He chose the wrong solution to the problem.

As I said. Alimony only lasts as long as there is a payee.

But, back to the point of the study. Nature/Nurture. The answer is obvious. It is both. Using the example of say...Pit Bulls. They are a species that has been bred to have certain more aggressive tendencies. However, when raised in a loving, calm and disciplined environment, they can be wonderfully loyal pets. Raised by people like Vick, they can become killers.

Why should humanity be any different than other species. We are after all just animals subject to the same rules of genetics, survival and environment.

Come on, the implication here is that we are not in control of our genetics, it's a crap shoot, and therefore government must step in to correct this type of victimhood by redistributing the wealth of those unaffected aka normal to those that are genetic victims manifest as violent because of the environmental factors like poverty and abuse turning on those genes making them thus.

"Maybe those Victorians, with all their manly virtues and sublimation, had it right after all."

That's what Neal Stephenson supposed in The Diamond Age. When technology rendered necessity obsolete, people found that cultures that had rigid customs were superior to those without, even with technology that would seemingly make those customs unnecessary.

"In boys not exposed to the risk factors, genetics played no role in any of their violent behavior. The positive environment had prevented the genetic switches — to use Mr. Pinker’s word — that affect aggression from being turned on. In boys with eight or more risk factors, however, genes explained 80 percent of their violence. Their switches had been flipped."

And the best way to lower the risk factors is to have an intact family with a biological father. The way to understand the risk factor/environment meme is to understand that the risk factors are spread across humanity. They are not predominate in black genes. Fatherlessness is predominate in black families. So the genes are expressed, because their is no father to protect from envirnomental trauma or teach the boys how to deal with their anger.

Once you control for no father in the home, white and minority incarceration rates are within 2 or 3 points.

It is the choices, not the genes. We have known this for decades, but it is politically incorrect to state the facts. It also causes serious problems with the progressive idea of subsidizing single mothers. Statistically single mothers turn out thugs. Stop subsidizing thugs by stopping generous support of fatherless families.

Chosing to be sexually active has HUGE consequences. It is time we grew up as a culture and faced facts.

But, back to the point of the study. Nature/Nurture. The answer is obvious. It is both. Using the example of say...Pit Bulls. They are a species that has been bred to have certain more aggressive tendencies. However, when raised in a loving, calm and disciplined environment, they can be wonderfully loyal pets. Raised by people like Vick, they can become killers.

Pit Bulls are not human-aggressive.

They do (some of them) enjoy a dog fight, which is how come they're used for dog fighting. It's called gameness, which is a positive trait all over.

Even if the dogs enjoy fighting, we don't want people to enjoy dogs fighting, so we outlaw it; which is probably a good idea.

(You can teach any dog not to be dog aggressive pretty easily, just as you teach him not to do all sorts of things he might like to do. You don't want him going after the neighbor's dog if the neighbor's dog seems to him to be a potential worthy foe.)

The dog handler has to reach into a dog fight to stop it, and doesn't want dogs that bite him, so human agressiveness is a bad trait and bred out in any case.

However, Pit Bulls are big dogs and strong dogs, so any bite can be pretty noticeable; and any dog that you make crazy will bite.

Teenaged males get big strong dogs and make them crazy because they think it's cool. There's no point to a crazy small dog, status-wise. You want a dog that's dangerous, to prove that you're a man, even though that's exactly what you're not.

You make a dog crazy by only doing things that make no sense to him; the opposite of training, where making sense to the dog is the point.

Pit Bulls were so prized as family dogs by the public that they were America's dog in WWI, corresponding to the British bulldog.

Really, Jolly? Are you really going to be the typo cop around here? Does benching 400 have anything to do with the minimum requirements for that job, or do you just have do be a bigot with a penchant for meandering grammer?

Try to string more than a couple of complete sentences together for a few days on end and I'll start taking you seriously. Try to avoid mentions of your size and weight-lifting capabilities while you're at it.

In anticipating your completely garbled response, let's get yid-satanist-tp-nazi from peoria out of the way and save everyone some time, shall we?

Which do you want - a genome where there are areas the eventually cause violent reaction to ever-increasing threat, or areas that cause capitulation and surrender?

Don't dicker with that which you do not understand, and it looks like understanding is quite a ways off, what with the need to remove political, racial, economic and other influences from the resultant quagmire of 'conclusions'.

So far, nothing we know about the genome and human behavior warrants any actions at all.

One of the reasons I never cared much about the second generation Star Treks: they always felt like if they didn't think you were right, they'd fix you for you. Especially that pompous Troy, what a prissant.

With thuggish behavior? Any idea how many stereotypes you're fulfilling? And did the flaccid internet threats of violence do anything for you? When you type those, are you standing up banging away hard at your keyboard (a reinforced model, I'm sure, to absorb the power of your enormous guns that can bench 400 pounds).

You're worse than a joke because there's really nothing funny about you, Jolly.

ndspinelli said...For Chrissake, anyone who has ever raised a child knows they come out of the womb hardwired for ~70-80% of their pesonality. Parents, friends, our culture can tweek the remaining 20-30%. How can this be a fucking revelation.

=======================It is a revelation, but one that will be rejected by liberals and progressive Jews in the media deeply committed out of ideology to insist:

1. It is all nurture, not nature. that makes us who we are.2. If some people are deviant, it is deviant society that made them so. To fix that, changes must be imposed on the masses by the wiser, better-educated Elites.3. Despite our believe in nurture, "traditional moral values" are bunk and suppressive of individuality.4. And race is an artificial construct.

Help me out here, C4. What's the difference between a liberal and a progressive Jew. How about a progressive and a liberal Jew? How about conservative and a progressive Jew versus a conservative and a liberal?

Your DNA would be funny down at the lab, Mikey Pinker, even wearing like a Groucho nose and glasses--depending on who's running the lab-.For that matter, I doubt you know the mechanics of DNA from matzo balls ( googlestein er).

Pinker's not really a biologist anyway. He's a Chomskyan --which is to say, philosophical...and pseudo-scientist, like...you Mikey, and most of the A-tards. (Now, for those few here with triple digit IQs--we don't completely reject the Pinkster's writing on language. But it's not the la-bor-ra-tory, or empirical in any meaningful sense, apart from like counting words, sounds, etc).

This makes me think of BF Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity." Wherein the behaviorist notes that if the world cannot be re-made as one might wish, that the same result could be achieved if one were re-made to experience pleasure with the world as it is.

BF Skinner's thesis just needs updating: instead of operant conditioning to change the individual, the therapist-priesthood will engineer environments which throw those switches so as to maximize human satisfaction.

The reason eugenics is a bad word in modern sociology and related fields is because Hitler gave eugenics a bad name. This even though the Nazis did not really practice eugenics. For example, the SS required members to have their prospective spouses vetted by an SS genetic office. However, the process focused on the possibility of Jewish ancestors. Hereditary diseases and predispositions for mental imbalance were totally ignored. The fact that many of the people they murdered were of superior racial stock disproved their whole theory.

Scott M - liberals are everywhere. But "progressive Jews in the media" connotates the particular influence of progressive Jews in setting the "rules" in the media to what is acceptable and what is not. Not just putting people and ideas in that "yes" "no" template but setting what "facts" are allowed to be put in their media. When I mention "progressive Jews in the media", it is usually in context of them being in (sometimes carefully coordinated) lockstep solidarity with a meme they are pushing in the media organs they influence.

It's a crap shoot. You can be Einstein, and you won't produce another Einstein when you have kids.

In the crap shoot department, 50% of your genetic material is erased, when the sperm hits the egg.

So, even if you're a fucking criminal, the same rule applies to your offspring ... as it does to Einstein's offspring.

Now, let's say you want to go racist, here. What you'd notice is how Thomas Jefferson had access to Sally Hemmings. And, they had children, together. (His red hair showed up. Even on the kid who was a slave. And, served the food at his table.)

But the kid wasn't really "black." Because Sally Hemming's dad was white. (He had screwed a black woman.) And, Sally Hemmings was the maid that Jefferson's wife was "given." And, she brought her into her and Tom's, marriage. (Customs of the times.)

Thomas Jefferson's wife died. Her maid was a very close resemblence. Not really dark. And, her facial features were the same as his wife's.

Then, there were the children.

And, it didn't take 3 more generations of NOT screwing black people ... that brought Hemmings offspring to be indentified as white.

Sure. They gave DNA to be tested. They were amazed!

Most people, if they got their DNA tested, would be equally amazed.

(Homosexuality, according to Marlene Zak (sp?), comes off a mother's motrochondria. So it's only passed on through moms. And, unlike the rest of our genetics ... mitrochondria goes through very little changes, generation in. Generation out.)

It's the CLOSET that's a huge lie! Every homosexual alive today ... could probably find a whole batch of ancestors in that "CLOSET." But no one talked about it. Back i the old days, all they talked about was hiding the crazy aunts! That was the one thing that was feared could be passed onto babies.

Mitochondria. Then "Carol" sounds stupid enough to be one of the Atard regs--Crypto-Jew? Shouting Assclown? Educita? Alex or Pogo the klown? Scottie, in drag? Heh heh

See? Not funny in any way, shape, or form. Some of best comedic writes on this blog would disagree with me on just about everything. You? You're only here for your own amusement and thus worth nil to anyone that reads you.

I'd stop responding, but you're like a fucking multicar pile-up. Actually, you're a bit more like a double deuce back-up. Far more accurate.

Many of these studies are being done by people who publish in Biodemography and Social Biology, the journal of the American eugenics society, or who spoke at the Colorado Conferences on Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences which were organized by eugenics society board member Jason Boardman. This is a new version of eugenics called biodemography. It's overarching theme is called Cells to Society, meaning that advances in genetics should be translated into social policy. These advances consist of genome wide analyses which purport to show that there is a liberal gene, a conservative gene, a fundraiser for political party gene, a will be-mugged-more-than-once gene and some crime genes concentrated among African-Americans and many others to ridiculous to be believed. But preventing through behavioral reform the alleged anti-social or unhealthy genes from expressing themselves is a part of the health-care reform bill. And the amazing thing is that most of the studies the NYT is touting in its usual lame way are being done by 28 year-olds working on their PhD's. Not all - but most. You don't see that mentioned. Anyhow keep this in mind. Biodemography is the new eugenics and eugenics is once again saying that crime is genetic.

I think Hitler and Stalin were right. We just can't have science going off in any old direction and discovering uncomfortable truths. I mean where would it all lead?

So, I agree with most liberals. We need science by consensus. After all, if a majority of scientists say wheat will flourish in Siberia it must be true, and if the Siberian farmers can't do that, well, they must be Fascists. Right comrade?

rcocean said that " we can't have science discovering uncomfortable truths".Well the point of my post just previous to his was these "scientific truths" are being advanced by a small tight group with definite links to the eugenics movement in its new form, biodemography. These links should not be hidden when we recall the previous history of eugenics and medicine under the Nazis. We need sunshine on this new form of eugenics. And as I say a lot of these "new" are very new - they are PhD theses - utterly untested products of academia. Yet they are about to become policy. That makes me uncomfortable and it would even if they had no connection with eugenics.

You know, back in the 1950's, the secret word was "cancer." You couldn't say it. Not to a patient! Until Kubler-Ross came along ... And, showed how the patient was denied the very essence of conversation. That saying the word TO the patient brought PEACE.

So, back at Sloan-Kettering ... a patient would be in the bed, dying. And, the family outside. In hushed tones. Carrying on about the "secret."

While all the patient heard was "C" WORD.

You've got the "C" WORD.

Oh, it takes a while to lift the burdens of bullshit.

The good news. Between life and death. Is that you just can't go and blame your genetics.